growing wild in the san francisco hills

What you don’t know about this Chicago suburb will in no way surprise you.

You might be familiar with the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” A lesser known version of that phrase is, “When life throws you a Chicago hurricane that strands you in Evanston, IL for an evening, you might as well stay there the next day and judge / be jealous of everyone.” This is the version that happened to me.

Evanston is a Chicago suburb exclusively populated by people without any problems, beautiful churches made from white stone, homes that look like English cottages, and a creepy amount of trees. With a population of 74,000 (as of 2010), and a leaf count of just over 3 billion, Evanston is the home of Northwestern University (also the city’s largest employer), and the Grosse Point Lighthouse (on the National Register of Historic Places.)

I had the whole day to prowl around and figure out this wild suburb. You will not be surprised by what I found.

Here’s the low down on Evanston and its people:

People walk their dogs.

They leave their stuff unattended.

They trust strangers.

They play badminton with their kids on the front lawn. (See lower left corner. Disregard my face. It’s hard to take pictures behind you with an iPad while you’re trying to not look like a creep.)

They still use the word ethnic.

They have breakfast with their high school aged son and some of his engineering friends who are in a summer camp at Northwestern while a woman (me) sitting alone behind them eavesdrops on their entire conversation.

They enjoy a good font, especially this one that is popular with Northwestern University and Ye Olde English Pubs.

Even the street rodents are adorable and picturesque. (Those are rabbits.)

They have housing to spare.

Which is shocking considering the free board game night at the wine shoppe just around the corner.

All in all, Evanston seems like a pretty swell place to be. Especially if you like ethnic festivals, trusting strangers, and rabbit meat.